Book Reviews

Just recently in 2017 FULGUR added a set of 10 outstanding doorways to the already existing body of magical expedition maps. Their breathtaking book 'Decad of Intelligence' is a beast so rare and precious, it actually is not a book at all. It is the kind of object you will not want to place on a shelf, but rather allow it to breathe in your temple.

Each book of the Deluxe Edition is entirely hand bound, in full fine leather on order. The stunning highlight of this unique binding comes in its three-levelled relief frontispiece, featuring an igneous Cyprian of Antioch icon.

The forthcoming book 'Cyprian of Antioch: A Mage of Many Faces' is the result of more than two years of academic research and first hand magical work with the spirit of St.Cyprian. It’s intent was to take the reader on a literary journey into the presence and spirit of Cyprian himself.

In a not at all metaphorical sense JSK’s final double volume is an expedition into the ancestral blood-ties of this famous sorcerer-saint. To embark on it is to encounter Cyprian the Mage. Not only as the hero of an ancient polemic against the last surviving pagans, but more importantly as a still present inner contact, a powerful spirit in its own right.

Here are ten academic facts on Cyprian of Antioch you might not have heard about. We'll hear about Apollonius of Tyana, the Greek Magical Papyri as well as a Greek satire that might have well paved the way for Cyprian's own legend... An excellent distraction while you wait for Rubedo Press' Cypriana: Old World.

Fearless at Work actually isn't a book about work. It's a book about cowardice. The kind of cowardice most of us comfortably have forgotten about, and to aid that process we conveniantly began to call it everyday life. It's the cowardice that masks itself as numb acceptance or bitter withdrawal, as grudging tolerance or thick-skinned suffering. Fearless at Work is a book about the siege-mentality that most of us have come to live in these days.

Despite being buried in oblivion by most of us today, Dr. phil. Franz Sättler was quite a remarkable figurehead of the 20th century German speaking occultism. Born on 7th March 1883 in Brüx, Bohemia and deceased about 1942 in Nazi captivity, Sättler during his lifetime was not only a remarkable and highly gifted orientalist, travel writer from the Orient and co-author of the first German-Persian dictionary, but also a spy, a magician, a dealer in occult books and services, a social reformer, a rebel for sexual freedom and - obviously - the founder of the cult of Adonism. (...)

In Eugen Grosche (1888-1964, aka Gregor A Gregorius), the founder of the Fraternitas Saturni, we come across one of the most chatoyant characters in the more recent tradition of Western Magic. Throughout his life he had a strongly polarising effect on people. While avoiding much of the public excesses and scandals of his magical contemporaries (e.g. Austin Osman Spare, Aleister Crowley or the slightly younger Rosaleen Norton), his impact on the German speaking tradition of magic cannot be over-estimated. (...)

(...) Just like the previous release, Mr.Lechler’s new book on 'The First Years of the Fraternitas Saturni' is of incredible value in light of the above. It continues to dismantle many of the myths of our tradition that we allowed to turn cold and become false orthodoxy. The results of his painful private studies and research continue to break open the stone we, i.e. the German speaking tradition of magic believed to firmly stand on. In doing so, Mr. Lechler’s new book offers a vast amount of new perspective, new interpretations and of living stories to come. (...)

Volker Lechler’s biography of Heinrich Tränker opens a profound new perspective on our magical past as it emerged in the early 20th century. Based on the life and work of Tränker as its central hub the book paints an equally broad and incredibly accurate and detailed picture of the origin stories of many of our current magical orders and how they were formed by the personalities and human weaknesses of their founders.

Acquiring such knowledge and understanding of one’s own tradition’s history is so much more than satisfying academic or historic curiosity. It enables today’s students of magic to consciously realise the human errors woven into the tapestry of tradition they learn from.

How do you review a book that begins to dismantle the myths of an entire tradition? A tradition that depends so much on the numinous, the ill-defined such as Western Ritual Magic. A tradition in fact that was only able to develop in the absence of books like this.

Such books are the results of decades of research, countless hours, weeks and months in old archives, of reading, re-reading and cross-referencing handwritten notes, letters and biographical evidence left behind by their now famous authors. Such books begin to replace myth with fact and craving for a mythical past with the knowledge of what truly happened. It is books like these that make the busts of our ancestors tumble and threaten to reduce them to what they truly were - people who struggled to understand the path of magic just as we do today. Yet, maybe even more drastic to some, books like these threaten to make entire lodge egregores tumble and fall - in the bright light of historic facts, in the mirror that reveals our ancestors’ flaws and lies born from their desire to recreate a romantic past rather than recognising it for what it was.

The 'North Gate’ is a book as daring in its approach, dense in its content and demanding in its techniques as a line of metal hooks in a steep rock face. Simply reading it will amaze you about what real everyday, practical magic can do to yourself as well as the world around you. Just like a steep rock when faced from down below this book will also scare you - about the sheer amount of work that lies ahead of you and about how insufficient your own foundations suddenly might seem.

Petting Scorpions is an expression I came across in Daniel Smith’s book ‘Monkey Mind’. It is a small volume exploring the reality of living with anxiety disorders from a very personal point of view. In essence, Daniel is sharing his own story of dealing with his multiple anxieties from when they first emerged to the present day as an author, husband and parent. It is no happy-ending story, as he remarks himself. Rather it is a story that enables one to take a closer look at the siamese twin relationship one needs to accept when suffering from this kind of mental disorder.

Yesterday I finished reading 20th Century Magic and the Old Religion (originally published as 'Dancers to the Gods') by Alan Richardson. Well, to be honest, I didn’t finish the whole book but just its long biographic introduction which is why I bought it in the first place. What follows from there - and what I only read in excerpts - are about 70 pages of the personal magical diaries of Christine Harley and Charles Seymour respectively as well as the rare article The Old Religion by Charles Seymour.

Here is a book I whole heartedly recommend to every practicing magician out there. Well, I get that I am a little late in saying that - just 10 years after its original publication in the UK. But I hope it's never too late to recommend outstanding books?

I never thought a single book could contain an entire library. I never thought a single book could contain the actual workload, the depth of practical guidance that easily fills an entire lifetime as a magical adept. With the final part of Josephine McCarthy’s Magical Knowledge trilogy, however, this is exactly what you are holding in your hands.

As the fifth book in the series of the Books of the Master Emil Stejnar published a volume called ‘Magic with Astrology - The Genetic Code of Spirit and Soul’. What follows is my personal review of the first edition of the book in German language.

Emil Stejnar (* 1939) is an austrian born gold- and silversmith, a hermetic magician as well as a famous author and astrologer in many German speaking countries. He is known as the spiritual successor to Franz Bardon and has worked with, corrected and expended Bardon’s works for more than fifty years.

Josephine McCarthy’s new novel The Last Scabbard is not a novel indeed. It is an exercise in magical vision waiting to be activated. In ancient Tibet sacred text were buried to be found by designated people in the future and unfold their power when the time was ripe for what they had to say. Similarly, there is a secret text in this book, buried in the earth of a fantastic novel, waiting to be released by each one of us as a reader.